Declan Gardiner

Declan Gardiner was the acting boss of the Rizzuto crime family from 2004, succeeding Vito Rizzuto. He was the most influential non-Italian in Montreal's Mafia, and he had Bonanno crime family boss Salvatore Montagna and the family's other enemies murdered in order to cement the Rizzuto family's control over Montreal.

Biography
Declan Gardiner was born in Montreal, Canada to a family of Irish ancestry, but he became involved with the Italian Mafia under Vito Rizzuto, serving as one of his key lieutenants during his rise to power in the 1990s. In 2004, he investigated Devil's Kings MC biker Rejean's assassination attempt on Rizzuto and discovered the identity of the man who sent Rejean to murder Rizzuto before having Rejean executed. When Rizzuto was arrested that same year, Gardiner, his longtime right-hand man, became acting boss of the Rizzuto crime family, despite not being of Italian ancestry. Rizzuto's enemies murdered his father Nicolo Rizzuto and his son Nicolo Rizzuto Jr. while he was in prison, so Gardiner set out on a path of revenge against the family's enemies while also remaining wary of Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau's investigation of the family. After Rizzuto was released in 2012, he shunned Gardiner for the deaths of his family members, and Gardiner decided to secretly switch his allegiance to Rizzuto's archenemy Salvatore Montagna, boss of the Bonanno crime family. However, he double-crossed and murdered Montagna before having Rizzuto poisoned, taking control of the Rizzuto family.

By 2018, Gardiner was the reigning king of the Montreal drug trade, and, when he refused to partner with the new Langana crime family, he made enemies in them. The Langanas and their Ontario allies, the Cosoleto crime family, waged war on the Rizzutos for control of the city, so he allied with Native American crime boss Rose Sunwind to help move his product. After Nats Cosoleto, the son of Cosoleto boss Enzo Cosoleto, was imprisoned, Gardiner had Nats beaten in prison and forced Enzo to turn informant against his Langana allies. Gardiner then had the Langanas followed as they left town, and Langana co-boss Christian Langana was killed by Gardiner, while Christian's sister Teresa Langana had Nats and Enzo murdered. Teresa Langana, in alliance with the Devil's Kings MC, discovered that Gardiner was allied with Rose Sunwind, took Sunwind and Gardiner's nephew Reggie Ross hostage and had Ross killed, while Gardiner was wounded. Gardiner was able to kill Teresa Langana as she walked to a helicopter to make her escape, ending the Langana family. Meanwhile, the RCMP police force shut down its organized crime division due to the death of all of its leads; Gardiner was again the uncontested ruler of the city's underworld.